Will This Be the Day?

When someone decides they are going to go to a school and kill children, they are a coward.

Maybe they think they haven’t gotten enough attention in their lives and at school, and they think that killing children is the way to get that attention they are craving so much. Or, they were bullied and want to get revenge. Maybe, they want to make a statement and the best way to do that is a large body count of young lives. No matter the reason, they are aiming for us, the students. The children.

They are not making it their mission to only kill adult staff because they know that what gets you headlines, what gets you remembered, what gets you that attention, is killing children. And we as a student body want to change that.

We, the students who recognize the danger and the weight of a situation like this, walk into school wondering if this will be the day. The day that Union High School becomes the new headline screaming, “Worst shooting since Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.” We wonder if this will be the day that that weird senior guy with the man bun and a questionable wardrobe, that junior girl who always has a smile on her face, the sophomore who just got one of the lead roles in the school play, or maybe that varsity freshman, who is already surpassing many upperclassmen with his soccer skills, will be murdered. Then, we think, will this day be my last?

This is our reality. We now have to consider being shot in a safe place, our school.

During active shooter drills, they are only done in classroom periods. This is not a reality. This is not going to get the shooter the numbers they want. What is going to get them the numbers they want is the active areas — the hallways, assemblies, lunch periods. These are things we are not prepared for. These are things we do not actively practice during an intruder drill.

We are looking to the adults for answers to our questions, because we were taught to.

This is not a political problem or gun issue. It’s a people issue. As a team — faculty and students — we need to come up with real solutions so it’s not a “keeping something from happening again,” but a “keeping it from happening — period.”